EXAMINER DESCRIBES AUTOPSY IN S&M MURDER CASE

Doctor testifies Killgore was strangled with some kind of ligature

An autopsy of Brittany Killgore’s body revealed that she was strangled with a force great enough to crush the cartilage in her airway and cause her death, a doctor testified Thursday.

Deputy Medical Examiner Craig Nelson said during a Vista Superior Court hearing that Killgore, 22, was strangled with some kind of ligature and her body was moved to another location.

The body was found naked April 17, 2012, in a rural area near Lake Skinner.

Nelson’s testimony came on the fourth day of a preliminary hearing for three people accused in Killgore’s death. Defendants Louis Perez, 46, Dorothy Maraglino, 37, and Jessica Lopez, 25, are charged with murder.

All three lived or stayed periodically at a house on East Fallbrook Street in Fallbrook, where investigators believe Killgore was slain.

Perez, a Camp Pendleton Marine, is believed to have been the last person with Killgore on April 13, when she left her Fallbrook apartment with him to go on a dinner cruise in San Diego. She never made it to the cruise.

Nelson testified there were also cuts on her left wrist and left knee area that appeared as though someone had tried to dismember the body. The cut to the left leg was so deep it reached bone. The knee cap and thigh bone showed marks that were consistent with a tool — like a saw. Nelson said those cuts appeared to have been inflicted post-mortem.

Several witnesses have testified that Perez and the other defendants practiced bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism and engaged in those activities in the Fallbrook house.

Authorities and some witnesses have said Killgore, who was married to a Marine, was not involved in any of those activities.

When asked whether Killgore could have been choked accidentally during a bondage “play session,” Nelson said the injuries suggested more force than what might be expected in a consensual situation.

At the end of the preliminary hearing, the judge will decide whether there is enough evidence to order the three defendants to stand trial on the charges.